GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

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For decades, suspicion and outright animosity characterized relations between Turkey and its neighbors. The country's allies were to be found only in the West. Recently, however, the Turkish government has managed to implement a foreign policy shift of historic, even revolutionary proportions. Brussels should put to use the opportunities resulting from Turkey's international realignment.

In recent years, Turkey's accession to the European Union seems to have moved to the back burner of the European political agenda. Even in Germany, the debate rarely extends beyond the problems of the integration of Turkish minorities, or beyond the attendant row over a "full membership" or merely a "privileged partnership" for the candidate country. This loss of European interest is shortsighted, and especially now. Brussels seems to be overlooking the fact that Turkish foreign policy has undergone a profound change. By becoming increasingly involved in its own volatile neighborhood, Turkey is gaining in stature in the region - something that should in fact heighten Europeans' interest in Turkey's membership. Moreover, there is the danger that Brussels' apathy will only exacerbate the already noticeable "European Union fatigue in the Turkish society.

The architect of Turkey's new foreign policy is Ahmet Davutoglu, a long-time advisor to Tayyip Erdoðan. Since 2009, Davutoglu has been using his influence as Foreign Secretary to steer his country in the direction he laid out in his 2001 book Stratejik Derinlik (Strategic Depth: Turkey's International Role.) The author often respectfully referred to as the "Turkish Henry Kissinger" holds that the Turkish Republic has labored under self-imposed political isolation ever since it was founded in 1923, an isolation engendered by its strict neutrality vis-à-vis neighboring conflicts, as well as its exclusive alliance with the United States during the Cold War. In the process, Turkey missed the opportunity to exploit its varied historic and cultural ties in the region to act as mediator and keeper of the peace.

In order to fully exploit this potential, Davutoglu has argued, Turkey must achieve a rapprochement with its neighbors in the South Caucus as well as the Near East, a process that also involves intensifying regional trade and cross-border travel and tourism, thus facilitating contact among the various societies. This, by the way, is precisely the sort of good neighborliness that Brussels expects from every accession candidate. By following precisely such a strategy, Turkey has managed to place previously tense relations with its neighbors on a historic new footing. Whereas twenty years ago suspicion and outright animosity seemed to be the hallmarks of Turkey's interaction with its neighboring states, today problems persist with only two: Armenia and Cyprus. And even here, promising high-level negotiations are underway.

On October 10th, 2009 the Turkish and Armenian foreign secretaries signed a protocol in Zurich providing for the opening of the border between the two states and the resumption of diplomatic relations. Until that date, a key factor preventing closer ties had been Ankara's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide during World War I. The Armenian Supreme Court in Erevan recently declared that subject to certain reservations, the protocol was constitutionally sound. Nationalists in Turkey and Armenia alike, as well as in the Armenian Diaspora, are working to prevent ratification of the protocol by the respective parliaments.

Meanwhile Azerbaijan, the other player in the South Caucasian region, is pressing Ankara to make its resumption of diplomatic relations with Armenia contingent on Armenian concessions over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has close cultural ties with Turkey, also by their shared language, and has become the country's most important gas and oil supplier, via the Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan pipeline. Despite these remaining obstacles, however, the Zurich Protocol clearly marks a breakthrough in Turkish-Armenian relations, one that hardly seemed possible only two years ago.


The government has come to the realization that the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) can be disarmed only through the political process.


As to the Kurds in Turkey, the Erdoðan government has been pursuing a strategy of openness since last summer. Previously, the Turkish military repeatedly had been forced to make incursions into the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR) in Northern Iraq in order to strike the rear bases of the Kurdish National Liberation Front (PKK), which has been classified as a terrorist organization. In the past, Ankara had even threatened Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that it might occupy the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Since then, however, Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has come to the conclusion that the Kurdish conflict probably does not have a military solution and that the PKK can only be disarmed through the political process. Thus, Ankara has been cooperating with the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, while expressively acknowledging Iraqi sovereignty over its territory. By adopting a strategy of recognizing Kurdish demands for autonomy in principle, the AKP government has been doing more to quell this intractable conflict than any previous Turkish administration. In the end result, it is also meeting a key stipulation of the European Union accession process.

Thanks to this new foreign policy, Turkey's relations with Iraq have improved in other areas as well. Starting in 2003, Davutoglu has organized numerous, foreign-ministry-level meetings among Iraq's neighboring states with the objective of developing measures to counter the threatening disintegration of the Iraqi nation. In addition, Ankara has supported the integration of the Sunni minority into the post-war Iraqi social order, while at the same time entering into relations with the Shiite majority, in order to create a political counterweight to Iranian influence. The result: Turkish goods now are being exported not only to the KAR, but to the whole of Iraq. By helping to stabilize Iraq, Turkey has also managed to relax tensions with the United States, which had flared up in the wake of Turkish anger over the 2003invasion of Iraq.

Syria sees the thaw in its relations with Turkey as an opportunity, and a chance to end its isolation.

The situation with regard to Syria is similar. While Ankara and Damascus had previously been on the verge of armed conflict on many occasions, Erdoðan and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad were able to sign an agreement on visa-free travel in October of 2009. Even though the Syrians have by no means forgotten the nearly four centuries during which their country was a part of the Ottoman Empire, they clearly regard the closer ties with Turkey to be a promising opportunity - one that could help them break out of their political isolation without having to give in to American demands.

Thus far, Ankara's efforts to prod Syria towards reforms have not been particularly fruitful. Nonetheless, it was also pressure from Turkey - not just from Egypt - which impelled Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon in 2005. Moreover, thanks to Turkey's good relations with both Syria and (at least at present) Israel, Istanbul became the venue for a number of informal talks between the two antagonists in 2008. Though the talks were broken off in January of 2009 following the Gaza War, they still represented a contribution to the Arab-Israeli peace process, which Brussels has not managed to meaningfully promote thus far. At the request of Egypt and France, Turkey also helped broker the end of the Gaza War by negotiating with Hamas in January of 2009.

An alliance with the archrival

Even when it comes to its historic archrival Iran, Turkey has been mending fences. Although Turkey's secular Kemalist elite regards the theocratic regime of the Mullahs in Iran to be the Islamic-fundamentalist bogeyman, Ankara and Teheran in the meantime have begun coordinating their military strikes against Kurdish terrorists in a pragmatic fashion. Unlike the Kurdish insurgency, the Turkish military does not regard a nuclear-armed Iran to be a direct military threat with existential impacts on its national security. Both the AKP government and the military are far more concerned about the possible effects the Iranian nuclear program may have on the balance of power in the Near East.

Basically, Ankara looks favorably on the West's efforts to restrict the Iranian nuclear program. However, Turkey will hardly allow Israel or the United States to use its airspace to attack Iran in the foreseeable future. This is due in no small part to the strategic collaboration pursued by Turkey and Iran in developing Iranian oil and gas reserves, which increasingly has been influencing the two countries' relations. Next to the Russian Federation, Iran boasts the world's largest natural gas reserves, and its gas deliveries have made it Turkey's third-largest trading partner behind Russia and Ukraine. In the future, Turkey plans to pipe Iranian oil overland to its Mediterranean harbor at Ceyhan, while also using Iran as a conduit for gas bound for Turkey from Turkmenistan. Both these variants would benefit Europe, since they could help reduce the continent's dependence on Russian energy supplies by filling demand from other, additional sources.

While the foreign-policy reversal has improved Ankara's relations with almost all of its neighbors, Turkish-Israeli affairs have recently hit a nadir. For many years, Israel was the only ally the secular Turkish state had in a sea of hostile Islamic countries. Now that Turkey is moving towards a rapprochement with its Arab neighbors, however, its strategic alliance with the Jewish state has started to lose significance. Not much is being done to prevent this development, given that it is seen as the price to pay for higher prestige in the Arab world. Rash public statements by populists on both sides have only contributed to the deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations.

Davutoglu's foreign initiatives have had their greatest success in the field of energy policy. Thanks to its location connecting Europe with Asia and the Middle East, Turkey is able to act as a vital strategic bridge. In recent years, the country has become a hub of international oil and gas pipeline networks, thus becoming one of the major regional political players. This is yet another reason why Turkey has become an indispensable building block for Europe's energy security. Besides the aforementioned pipeline projects in Iran and the BTC pipeline in the South Caucasus, one should not forget the Nabucco gas pipeline that is to run from Central Asia and Iraq to Europe via the Balkans. The corresponding agreement was signed by the heads of state of Turkey, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary and Austria on July 12th, 2009 in Ankara. Less than a month later, on August 6th, Erdoðan and Vladimir Putin ratified the competing Southstream project, which is to convey Russian gas under the Black Sea to Turkey, and from there via the Balkans to Western Europe. Russia, for centuries a rival for influence in Eurasia, especially during the Cold War, has thus become one of Turkey's preferred trading partners in the energy sector.

The Russian Federation, once a competitor for regional influence, has become a preferred trading partner.

However, neither Turkey's internal reform process nor its accession to the European Union can be completed as long as the Cyprus dispute remains unresolved. In 2004, the European Union accepted Cyprus as a member state, without the Greek and Turkish parts of the island previously having been reunified. With this strategic blunder, the EU in effect allowed itself to be held hostage by the island's Greek majority, which represents Cyprus in the European Union and which can block Turkey's accession negotiations at any time. Ankara, Brussels and Athens should do everything in their power to support UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon in his efforts to achieve reunification.

Turkey has escaped its foreign policy straitjacket and is understood by a growing number of players as a credible broker in regional conflicts, especially by its Muslim neighbors. The Arab world in particular looks to Turkey as something of a trailblazer in its efforts to foster political dialogue and closer ties with Europe. However, Ankara would be ill advised were it to succumb to the temptation to turn away from the European Union. After all, it is precisely because of the potential accession that Turkey has been gaining the respect of its neighbors. For its part, Brussels should be the one to show greater interest in reinvigorating the languishing Turkish accession process. Turkish membership would give the European Union greater weight in the Near and Middle East, thereby enhancing Europe's ability to influence developments in this region. Moreover, Brussels should recognize that the doubts regularly expressed by European politicians concerning Turkey's eligibility for membership impede the candidate country's domestic reform process. The accession negotiations were officially launched in 2005; provided all preconditions are fulfilled, they should give Turkey realistic prospects for full membership.

The annual progress reports released by the European Union demonstrate clearly that Turkey must still implement substantial reforms. However, the issue is not whether the Turkey of today is ready to become a member of the EU of today. Rather, the long-term objective must be to create an European Union which, thanks to having a reformed Turkey as a Muslim member state, will be respected as a political partner by the Arab world. Such a new Europe, made stronger by having Turkey as a member state, will have a stronger hand to play vis-à-vis the Arab countries and will be in a better position to defuse the numerous conflicts in the region.